MARKHEIM

[Footnote: From "The Merry Men and Other Tales and Fables," by

Robert Louis Stevenson, published by Charles Scribner's Sons.]

"Yes," said the dealer, "our windfalls are of various kinds. Some

customers are ignorant, and then I touch a dividend on my superior

knowledge. Some are dishonest," and here he held up the candle, so

that the light fell strongly on his visitor, "and in that case,"

he continued, "I profit by my virtue."

Markheim had but just entered from the daylight streets, and his

eyes had not yet grown familiar with the mingled shine and

darkness in the shop. At these pointed words, and before the near

presence of the flame, he blinked painfully and looked aside.

The dealer chuckled. "You come to me on Christmas Day," he

resumed, "when you know that I am alone in my house, put up my

shutters, and make a point of refusing business. Well, you will

have to pay for that; you will have to pay for my loss of time,

when I should be balancing my books; you will have to pay,

besides, for a kind of manner that I remark in you to-day very

strongly. I am the essence of discretion, and ask no awkward

questions; but when a customer cannot look me in the eye, he has

to pay for it." The dealer once more chuckled; and then, changing

to his usual business voice, though still with a note of irony,

"You can give, as usual, a clear account of how you came into the

possession of the object?" he continued. "Still your uncle's

cabinet? A remarkable collector, sir!"

And the little pale, round-shouldered dealer stood almost on tip-

toe, looking over the top of his gold spectacles, and nodding his

head with every mark of disbelief. Markheim returned his gaze with

one of infinite pity, and a touch of horror.

"This time," said he, "you are in error. I have not come to sell,

but to buy. I have no curios to dispose of; my uncle's cabinet is

bare to the wainscot; even were it still intact, I have done well

on the Stock Exchange, and should more likely add to it than

otherwise, and my errand to-day is simplicity itself. I seek a

Christmas present for a lady," he continued, waxing more fluent as

he struck into the speech he had prepared; "and certainly I owe

you every excuse for thus disturbing you upon so small a matter.

But the thing was neglected yesterday; I must produce my little

compliment at dinner; and, as you very well know, a rich marriage

is not a thing to be neglected."

There followed a pause, during which the dealer seemed to weigh

this statement incredulously. The ticking of many clocks among the

curious lumber of the shop, and the faint rushing of the cabs in a

near thoroughfare, filled up the interval of silence.

"Well, sir," said the dealer, "be it so. You are an old customer

after all; and if, as you say, you have the chance of a good

marriage, far be it from me to be an obstacle. Here is a nice

thing for a lady now," he went on, "this hand glass--fifteenth

century, warranted; comes from a good collection, too; but I

reserve the name, in the interests of my customer, who was just

like yourself, my dear sir, the nephew and sole heir of a

remarkable collector."

The dealer, while he thus ran on in his dry and biting voice, had

stooped to take the object from its place; and, as he had done so,

a shock had passed through Markheim, a start both of hand and

foot, a sudden leap of many tumultuous passions to the face. It

passed as swiftly as it came, and left no trace beyond a certain

trembling of the hand that now received the glass.

"A glass," he said hoarsely, and then paused, and repeated it more

clearly. "A glass? For Christmas? Surely not?"

"And why not?" cried the dealer. "Why not a glass?"

Markheim was looking upon him with an indefinable expression. "You

ask me why not?" he said. "Why, look here--look in it--look at

yourself! Do you like to see it? No! nor I--nor any man."

The little man had jumped back when Markheim had so suddenly

confronted him with the mirror; but now, perceiving there was

nothing worse on hand, he chuckled. "Your future lady, sir, must

be pretty hard favored," said he.

"I ask you," said Markheim, "for a Christmas present, and you give

me this--this damned reminder of years, and sins, and follies--

this hand-conscience! Did you mean it? Had you a thought in your

mind? Tell me. It will be better for you if you do. Come, tell me

about yourself. I hazard a guess now, that you are in secret a

very charitable man?"

The dealer looked closely at his companion. It was very odd,

Markheim did not appear to be laughing; there was something in his

face like an eager sparkle of hope, but nothing of mirth.

"What are you driving at?" the dealer asked.

"Not charitable?" returned the other, gloomily. "Not charitable;

not pious; not scrupulous; unloving, unbeloved; a hand to get

money, a safe to keep it. Is that all? Dear God, man, is that

all?"

"I will tell you what it is," began the dealer, with some

sharpness, and then broke off again into a chuckle. "But I see

this is a love match of yours, and you have been drinking the

lady's health."

"Ah!" cried Markheim, with a strange curiosity. "Ah, have you been

in love! Tell me about that."

"I," cried the dealer. "I in love! I never had the time, nor have

I the time to-day for all this nonsense. Will you take the glass?"

"Where is the hurry?" returned Markheim. "It is very pleasant to

stand here talking; and life is so short and insecure that I would

not hurry away from any pleasure--no, not even from so mild a one

as this. We should rather cling, cling to what little we can get,

like a man at a cliff's edge. Every second is a cliff, if you

think upon it--a cliff a mile high--high enough, if we fall, to

dash us out of every feature of humanity. Hence it is best to talk

pleasantly. Let us talk of each other; why should we wear this

mask? Let us be confidential. Who knows, we might become friends?"

"I have just one word to say to you," said the dealer. "Either

make your purchase, or walk out of my shop."

"True, true," said Markheim. "Enough fooling. To business. Show me

something else."

The dealer stooped once more, this time to replace the glass upon

the shelf, his thin blond hair falling over his eyes as he did so.

Markheim moved a little nearer, with one hand in the pocket of his

greatcoat; he drew himself up and filled his lungs--at the same

time many different emotions were depicted together on his face--

terror, horror, and resolve, fascination and a physical repulsion;

and through a haggard lift of his upper lip, his teeth looked out.

"This, perhaps, may suit," observed the dealer; and then, as he

began to re-arise, Markheim bounded from behind upon his victim.

The long, skewerlike dagger flashed and fell. The dealer struggled

like a hen, striking his temple on the shelf, and then tumbled on

the floor in a heap.

Time had some score of small voices in that shop, some stately and

slow as was becoming to their great age; others garrulous and

hurried. All these told out the seconds in an intricate chorus of

tickings. Then the passage of a lad's feet, heavily running on the

pavement, broke in upon these smaller voices and startled Markheim

into the consciousness of his surroundings. He looked about him

awfully. The candle stood on the counter, its flame solemnly

wagging in a draught; and by that inconsiderable movement, the

whole room was filled with noiseless bustle and kept heaving like

a sea: the tall shadows nodding, the gross blots of darkness

swelling and dwindling as with respiration, the faces of the

portraits and the china gods changing and wavering like images in

water. The inner door stood ajar, and peered into that leaguer of

shadows with a long slit of daylight like a pointing finger.

From these fear-stricken rovings, Markheim's eyes returned to the

body of his victim, where it lay both humped and sprawling,

incredibly small and strangely meaner than in life. In these poor,

miserly clothes, in that ungainly attitude, the dealer lay like so

much sawdust. Markheim had feared to see it, and, lo! it was

nothing. And yet, as he gazed, this bundle of old clothes and pool

of blood began to find eloquent voices. There it must lie; there

was none to work the cunning hinges or direct the miracle of

locomotion--there it must lie till it was found. Found! ay, and

then? Then would this dead flesh lift up a cry that would ring

over England, and fill the world with the echoes of pursuit. Ay,

dead or not, this was still the enemy. "Time was that when the

brains were out," he thought; and the first word struck into his

mind. Time, now that the deed was accomplished--time, which had

closed for the victim, had become instant and momentous for the

slayer.

The thought was yet in his mind, when, first one and then another,

with every variety of pace and voice--one deep as the bell from a

cathedral turret, another ringing on its treble notes the prelude

of a waltz--the clocks began to strike the hour of three in the

afternoon.

The sudden outbreak of so many tongues in that dumb chamber

staggered him. He began to bestir himself, going to and fro with

the candle, beleaguered by moving shadows, and startled to the

soul by chance reflections. In many rich mirrors, some of home

designs, some from Venice or Amsterdam, he saw his face repeated

and repeated, as it were an army of spies; his own eyes met and

detected him; and the sound of his own steps, lightly as they

fell, vexed the surrounding quiet. And still as he continued to

fill his pockets, his mind accused him, with a sickening

iteration, of the thousand faults of his design. He should have

chosen a more quiet hour; he should have prepared an alibi; he

should not have used a knife; he should have been more cautious,

and only bound and gagged the dealer, and not killed him; he

should have been more bold, and killed the servant also; he should

have done all things otherwise; poignant regrets, weary, incessant

toiling of the mind to change what was unchangeable, to plan what

was now useless, to be the architect of the irrevocable past.

Meanwhile, and behind all this activity, brute terrors, like the

scurrying of rats in a deserted attic, filled the more remote

chambers of his brain with riot; the hand of the constable would

fall heavy on his shoulder, and his nerves would jerk like a

hooked fish; or he beheld, in galloping defile, the dock, the

prison, the gallows, and the black coffin.

Terror of the people in the street sat down before his mind like a

besieging army. It was impossible, he thought, but that some rumor

of the struggle must have reached their ears and set on edge their

curiosity; and now, in all the neighboring houses, he divined them

sitting motionless: and with uplifted ear--solitary people,

condemned to spend Christmas dwelling alone on memories of the

past, and now startlingly recalled from that tender exercise;

happy family parties, struck into silence round the table, the

mother still with raised finger: every degree and age and humor,

but all, by their own hearts, prying and hearkening and weaving

the rope that was to hang him. Sometimes it seemed to him he could

not move too softly; the clink of the tall Bohemian goblets rang

out loudly like a bell; and alarmed by the bigness of the ticking,

he was tempted to stop the clocks. And then, again, with a swift

transition of his terrors, the very silence of the place appeared

a source of peril, and a thing to strike and freeze the passer-by;

and he would step more boldly, and bustle aloud among the contents

of the shop, and imitate, with elaborate bravado, the movements of

a busy man at ease in his own house.

But he was now so pulled about by different alarms that, while one

portion of his mind was still alert and cunning, another trembled

on the brink of lunacy. One hallucination in particular took a

strong hold on his credulity. The neighbor hearkening with white

face beside his window, the passer-by arrested by a horrible

surmise on the pavement--these could at worst suspect, they could

not know; through the brick walls and shuttered windows only

sounds could penetrate. But here, within the house, was he alone?

He knew he was; he had watched the servant set forth

sweethearting, in her poor best, "out for the day" written in

every ribbon and smile. Yes, he was alone, of course; and yet, in

the bulk of empty house above him, he could surely hear a stir of

delicate footing--he was surely conscious, inexplicably conscious

of some presence. Ay, surely; to every room and corner of the

house his imagination followed it; and now it was a faceless

thing, and yet had eyes to see with; and again it was a shadow of

himself; and yet again behold the image of the dead dealer,

reinspired with cunning and hatred.

At times, with a strong effort, he would glance at the open door

which still seemed to repel his eyes. The house was tall, the

skylight small and dirty, the day blind with fog; and the light

that filtered down to the ground story was exceedingly faint, and

showed dimly on the threshold of the shop. And yet, in that strip

of doubtful brightness, did there not hang wavering a shadow?

Suddenly, from the street outside, a very jovial gentleman began

to beat with a staff on the shop-door, accompanying his blows with

shouts and railleries in which the dealer was continually called

upon by name. Markheim, smitten into ice, glanced at the dead man.

But no! he lay quite still; he was fled away far beyond earshot of

these blows and shoutings; he was sunk beneath seas of silence;

and his name, which would once have caught his notice above the

howling of a storm, had become an empty sound. And presently the

jovial gentleman desisted from his knocking and departed.

Here was a broad hint to hurry what remained to be done, to get

forth from this accusing neighborhood, to plunge into a bath of

London multitudes, and to reach, on the other side of day, that

haven of safety and apparent innocence--his bed. One visitor had

come: at any moment another might follow and be more obstinate. To

have done the deed, and yet not to reap the profit, would be too

abhorrent a failure. The money, that was now Markheim's concern;

and as a means to that, the keys.

He glanced over his shoulder at the open door, where the shadow

was still lingering and shivering; and with no conscious

repugnance of the mind, yet with a tremor of the belly, he drew

near the body of his victim. The human character had quite

departed. Like a suit half-stuffed with bran, the limbs lay

scattered, the trunk doubled, on the floor; and yet the thing

repelled him. Although so dingy and inconsiderable to the eye, he

feared it might have more significance to the touch. He took the

body by the shoulders, and turned it on its back. It was strangely

light and supple, and the limbs, as if they had been broken, fell

into the oddest postures. The face was robbed of all expression;

but it was as pale as wax, and shockingly smeared with blood about

one temple. That was, for Markheim, the one displeasing

circumstance. It carried him back, upon the instant, to a certain

day in a fishers' village: a gray day, a piping wind, a crowd upon

the street, the blare of brasses, the booming of drums, the nasal

voice of a ballad singer; and a boy going to and fro, buried over

head in the crowd and divided between interest and fear, until,

coming out upon the chief place of concourse, he beheld a booth

and a great screen with pictures, dismally designed, garishly

colored: Brownrigg with her apprentice; the Mannings with their

murdered guest; Weare in the death-grip of Thurtell; and a score

besides of famous crimes. The thing was as clear as an illusion;

he was once again that little boy; he was looking once again, and

with the same sense of physical revolt, at these vile pictures; he

was still stunned by the thumping of the drums. A bar of that

day's music returned upon his memory; and at that, for the first

time, a qualm came over him, a breath of nausea, a sudden weakness

of the joints, which he must instantly resist and conquer.

He judged it more prudent to confront than to flee from these

considerations; looking the more hardily in the dead face, bending

his mind to realize the nature and greatness of his crime. So

little a while ago that face had moved with every change of

sentiment, that pale mouth had spoken, that body had been all on

fire with governable energies; and now, and by his act, that piece

of life had been arrested, as the horologist, with interjected

finger, arrests the beating of the clock. So he reasoned in vain;

he could rise to no more remorseful consciousness; the same heart

which had shuddered before the painted effigies of crime, looked

on its reality unmoved. At best, he felt a gleam of pity for one

who had been endowed in vain with all those faculties that can

make the world a garden of enchantment, one who had never lived

and who was now dead. But of penitence, no, not a tremor.

With that, shaking himself clear of these considerations, he found

the keys and advanced towards the open door of the shop. Outside,

it had begun to rain smartly; and the sound of the shower upon the

roof had banished silence. Like some dripping cavern, the chambers

of the house were haunted by an incessant echoing, which filled

the ear and mingled with the ticking of the clocks. And, as

Markheim approached the door, he seemed to hear, in answer to his

own cautious tread, the steps of another foot withdrawing up the

stair. The shadow still palpitated loosely on the threshold. He

threw a ton's weight of resolve upon his muscles, and drew back

the door.

The faint, foggy daylight glimmered dimly on the bare floor and

stairs; on the bright suit of armor posted, halbert in hand, upon

the landing; and on the dark wood-carvings, and framed pictures

that hung against the yellow panels of the wainscot. So loud was

the beating of the rain through all the house that, in Markheim's

ears, it began to be distinguished into many different sounds.

Footsteps and sighs, the tread of regiments marching in the

distance, the chink of money in the counting, and the creaking of

doors held stealthily ajar, appeared to mingle with the patter of

the drops upon the cupola and the gushing of the water in the

pipes. The sense that he was not alone grew upon him to the verge

of madness. On every side he was haunted and begirt by presences.

He heard them moving in the upper chambers; from the shop, he

heard the dead man getting to his legs; and as he began with a

great effort to mount the stairs, feet fled quietly before him and

followed stealthily behind. If he were but deaf, he thought, how

tranquilly he would possess his soul! And then again, and

hearkening with ever fresh attention, he blessed himself for that

unresting sense which held the outposts and stood a trusty

sentinel upon his life. His head turned continually on his neck;

his eyes, which seemed starting from their orbits, scouted on

every side, and on every side were half-rewarded as with the tail

of something nameless vanishing. The four-and-twenty steps to the

first floor were four-and-twenty agonies.

On that first story, the doors stood ajar, three of them like

three ambushes, shaking his nerves like the throats of cannon. He

could never again, he felt, be sufficiently immured and fortified

from men's observing eyes; he longed to be home, girt in by walls,

buried among bedclothes, and invisible to all but God. And at that

thought he wondered a little, recollecting tales of other

murderers and the fear they were said to entertain of heavenly

avengers. It was not so, at least, with, him. He feared the laws

of nature, lest, in their callous and immutable procedure, they

should preserve some damning evidence of his crime. He feared

tenfold more, with a slavish, superstitious terror, some scission

in the continuity of man's experience, some wilful illegality of

nature. He played a game of skill, depending on the rules,

calculating consequence from cause; and what if nature, as the

defeated tyrant overthrew the chessboard, should break the mould

of their succession? The like had befallen Napoleon (so writers

said) when the winter changed the time of its appearance. The like

might befall Markheim: the solid walls might become transparent

and reveal his doings like those of bees in a glass hive; the

stout planks might yield under his foot like quicksands and detain

him in their clutch; ay, and there were soberer accidents that

might destroy him: if, for instance, the house should fall and

imprison him beside the body of his victim; or the house next door

should fly on fire, and the firemen invade him from all sides.

These things he feared; and, in a sense, these things might be

called the hands of God reached forth against sin. But about God

himself he was at ease; his act was doubtless exceptional, but so

were his excuses, which God knew; it was there, and not among men,

that he felt sure of justice.

When he had got safe into the drawing room, and shut the door

behind him, he was aware of a respite from alarms. The room was

quite dismantled, uncarpeted besides, and strewn with packing

cases and incongruous furniture; several great pier glasses, in

which he beheld himself at various angles, like an actor on a

stage; many pictures, framed and unframed, standing, with their

faces to the wall; a fine Sheraton sideboard, a cabinet of

marquetry, and a great old bed, with tapestry hangings. The

windows opened to the floor; but by great good fortune the lower

part of the shutters had been closed, and this concealed him from

the neighbors. Here, then, Markheim drew in a packing case before

the cabinet, and began to search among the keys. It was a long

business, for there were many; and it was irksome, besides; for,

after all, there might be nothing in the cabinet, and time was on

the wing. But the closeness of the occupation sobered him. With

the tail of his eye he saw the door--even glanced at it from time

to time directly, like a besieged commander pleased to verify the

good estate of his defences. But in truth he was at peace. The

rain falling in the street sounded natural and pleasant.

Presently, on the other side, the notes of a piano were wakened to

the music of a hymn, and the voices of many children took up the

air and words. How stately, how comfortable was the melody! How

fresh the youthful voices! Markheim gave ear to it smilingly, as

he sorted out the keys; and his mind was thronged with answerable

ideas and images; church-going children and the pealing of the

high organ; children afield, bathers by the brookside, ramblers on

the brambly common, kite fliers in the windy and cloud navigated

sky; and then, at another cadence of the hymn, back again to

church, and the somnolence of summer Sundays, and the high genteel

voice of the parson (which he smiled a little to recall) and the

painted Jacobean tombs, and the dim lettering of the Ten

Commandments in the chancel.

And as he sat thus, at once busy and absent, he was startled to

his feet. A flash of ice, a flash of fire, a bursting gush of

blood, went over him, and then he stood transfixed and thrilling.

A step mounted the stair slowly and steadily, and presently a hand

was laid upon the knob, and the lock clicked, and the door opened.

Fear held Markheim in a vice. What to expect he knew not, whether

the dead man walking, or the official ministers of human justice,

or some chance witness blindly stumbling in to consign him to the

gallows. But when a face was thrust into the aperture, glanced

round the room, looked at him, nodded and smiled as if in friendly

recognition, and then withdrew again, and the door closed behind

it, his fear broke loose from his control in a hoarse cry. At the

sound of this the visitant returned.

"Did you call me?" he asked, pleasantly, and with that he entered

the room and closed the door behind him.

Markheim stood and gazed at him with all his eyes. Perhaps there

was a film upon his sight, but the outlines of the newcomer seemed

to change and waver like those of the idols in the wavering

candlelight of the shop; and at times he thought he knew him; and

at times he thought he bore a likeness to himself; and always,

like a lump of living terror, there lay in his bosom the

conviction that this thing was not of the earth and not of God.

And yet the creature had a strange air of the commonplace, as he

stood looking on Markheim with a smile; and when he added: "You

are looking for the money, I believe?" it was in the tones of

everyday politeness.

Markheim made no answer.

"I should warn you," resumed the other, "that the maid has left

her sweetheart earlier than usual and will soon be here. If Mr.

Markheim be found in this house, I need not describe to him the

consequences."

"You know me?" cried the murderer.

The visitor smiled. "You have long been a favorite of mine," he

said; "and I have long observed and often sought to help you."

"What are you?" cried Markheim: "the devil?"

"What I may be," returned the other, "cannot affect the service I

propose to render you."

"It can," cried Markheim; "it does! Be helped by you? No, never;

not by you! You do not know me yet; thank God, you do not know

me!"

"I know you," replied the visitant, with a sort of kind severity

or rather firmness. "I know you to the soul."

"Know me!" cried Markheim. "Who can do so? My life is but a

travesty and slander on myself. I have lived to belie my nature.

All men do; all men are better than this disguise that grows about

and stifles them. You see each dragged away by life, like one whom

bravos have seized and muffled in a cloak. If they had their own

control--if you could see their faces, they would be altogether

different, they would shine out for heroes and saints! I am worse

than most; my self is more overlaid; my excuse is known to me and

God. But, had I the time, I could disclose myself."

"To me?" inquired the visitant.

"To you before all," returned the murderer. "I supposed you were

intelligent. I thought--since you exist--you would prove a reader

of the heart. And yet you would propose to judge me by my acts!

Think of it; my acts! I was born and I have lived in a land of

giants; giants have dragged me by the wrists since I was born out

of my mother--the giants of circumstance. And you would judge me

by my acts! But can you not look within? Can you not understand

that evil is hateful to me? Can you not see within me the clear

writing of conscience, never blurred by any wilful sophistry,

although too often disregarded? Can you not read me for a thing

that surely must be common as humanity--the unwilling sinner?"

"All this is very feelingly expressed," was the reply, "but it

regards me not. These points of consistency are beyond my

province, and I care not in the least by what compulsion you may

have been dragged away, so as you are but carried in the right

direction. But time flies; the servant delays, looking in the

faces of the crowd and at the pictures on the hoardings, but still

she keeps moving nearer; and remember, it is as if the gallows

itself was striding towards you through the Christmas streets!

Shall I help you; I, who know all? Shall I tell you where to find

the money?"

"For what price?" asked Markheim.

"I offer you the service for a Christmas gift," returned the

other.

Markheim could not refrain from smiling with a kind of bitter

triumph. "No," said he, "I will take nothing at your hands; if I

were dying of thirst, and it was your hand that put the pitcher to

my lips, I should find the courage to refuse. It may be credulous,

but I will do nothing to commit myself to evil."

"I have no objection to a deathbed repentance," observed the

visitant.

"Because you disbelieve their efficacy!" Markheim cried.

"I do not say so," returned the other; "but I look on these things

from a different side, and when the life is done my interest

falls. The man has lived to serve me, to spread black looks under

color of religion, or to sow tares in the wheat field, as you do,

in a course of weak compliance with desire. Now that he draws so

near to his deliverance, he can add but one act of service--to

repent, to die smiling, and thus to build up in confidence and

hope the more timorous of my surviving followers. I am not so hard

a master. Try me. Accept my help. Please yourself in life as you

have done hitherto; please yourself more amply, spread your elbows

at the board; and when the night begins to fall and the curtains

to be drawn, I tell you, for your greater comfort, that you will

find it even easy to compound your quarrel with your conscience,

and to make a truckling peace with God. I came but now from such a

deathbed, and the room was full of sincere mourners, listening to

the man's last words: and when I looked into that face, which had

been set as a flint against mercy, I found it smiling with hope."

"And do you, then, suppose me such a creature?" asked Markheim.

"Do you think I have no more generous aspirations than to sin, and

sin, and sin, and, at last, sneak into heaven? My heart rises at

the thought. Is this, then, your experience of mankind? or is it

because you find me with red hands that you presume such baseness?

and is this crime of murder indeed so impious as to dry up the

very springs of good?"

"Murder is to me no special category," replied the other. "All

sins are murder, even as all life is war. I behold your race, like

starving mariners on a raft, plucking crusts out of the hands of

famine and feeding on each other's lives. I follow sins beyond the

moment of their acting; I find in all that the last consequence is

death; and to my eyes, the pretty maid who thwarts her mother with

such taking graces on a question of a ball, drips no less visibly

with human gore than such a murderer as yourself. Do I say that I

follow sins? I follow virtues also; they differ not by the

thickness of a nail, they are both scythes for the reaping angel

of Death. Evil, for which I live, consists not in action but in

character. The bad man is dear to me; not the bad act, whose

fruits, if we could follow them far enough down the hurtling

cataract of the ages, might yet be found more blessed than those

of the rarest virtues. And it is not because you have killed a

dealer, but because you are Markheim, that I offered to forward

your escape."

"I will lay my heart open to you," answered Markheim. "This crime

on which you find me is my last. On my way to it I have learned

many lessons; itself is a lesson, a momentous lesson. Hitherto I

have been driven with revolt to what I would not; I was a

bondslave to poverty, driven and scourged. There are robust

virtues that can stand in these temptations; mine was not so: I

had a thirst of pleasure. But today, and out of this deed, I pluck

both warning and riches--both the power and a fresh resolve to be

myself. I become in all things a free actor in the world; I begin

to see myself all changed, these hands the agents of good, this

heart at peace. Something comes over me out of the past; something

of what I have dreamed on Sabbath evenings to the sound of the

church organ, of what I forecast when I shed tears over noble

books, or talked, an innocent child, with my mother. There lies my

life; I have wandered a few years, but now I see once more my city

of destination."

"You are to use this money on the Stock Exchange, I think?"

remarked the visitor; "and there, if I mistake not, you have

already lost some thousands?"

"Ah," said Markheim, "but this time I have a sure thing."

"This time, again, you will lose," replied the visitor quietly.

"Ah, but I keep back the half!" cried Markheim.

"That also you will lose," said the other.

The sweat started upon Markheim's brow. "Well, then, what matter?"

he exclaimed. "Say it be lost, say I am plunged again in poverty,

shall one part of me, and that the worst, continue until the end

to override the better? Evil and good run strong in me, haling me

both ways. I do not love the one thing, I love all. I can conceive

great deeds, renunciations, martyrdoms; and though I be fallen to

such a crime as murder, pity is no stranger to my thoughts. I pity

the poor; who knows their trials better than myself? I pity and

help them; I prize love, I love honest laughter; there is no good

thing nor true thing on earth but I love it from my heart. And are

my vices only to direct my life, and my virtues to lie without

effect, like some passive lumber of the mind? Not so; good, also,

is a spring of acts."

But the visitant raised his finger. "For six-and-thirty years that

you have been in this world," said he, "through many changes of

fortune and varieties of humor, I have watched you steadily fall.

Fifteen years ago you would have started at a theft. Three years

back you would have blenched at the name of murder. Is there any

crime, is there any cruelty or meanness, from which you still

recoil?--five years from now I shall detect you in the fact!

Downward, downward, lies your way; nor can anything but death

avail to stop you."

"It is true," Markheim said huskily, "I have in some degree

complied with evil. But it is so with all: the very saints, in the

mere exercise of living, grow less dainty, and take on the tone of

their surroundings."

"I will propound to you one simple question," said the other; "and

as you answer, I shall read to you your moral horoscope. You have

grown in many things more lax; possibly you do right to be so; and

at any account, it is the same with all men. But granting that,

are you in any one particular, however trifling, more difficult to

please with your own conduct, or do you go in all things with a

looser rein?"

"In any one?" repeated Markheim, with an anguish of consideration.

"No," he added, with despair, "in none! I have gone down in all."

"Then," said the visitor, "content yourself with what you are, for

you will never change; and the words of your part on this stage

are irrevocably written down."

Markheim stood for a long while silent, and indeed it was the

visitor who first broke the silence. "That being so," he said,

"shall I show you the money?"

"And grace?" cried Markheim.

"Have you not tried it?" returned the other. "Two or three years

ago, did I not see you on the platform of revival meetings, and

was not your voice the loudest in the hymn?"

"It is true," said Markheim; "and I see clearly what remains for

me by way of duty. I thank you for these lessons from my soul; my

eyes are opened, and I behold myself at last for what I am."

At this moment, the sharp note of the doorbell rang through the

house; and the visitant, as though this were some concerted signal

for which he had been waiting, changed at once in his demeanor.

"The maid!" he cried. "She has returned, as I forewarned you, and

there is now before you one more difficult passage. Her master,

you must say, is ill; you must let her in, with an assured but

rather serious countenance--no smiles, no overacting, and I

promise you success! Once the girl within, and the door closed,

the same dexterity that has already rid you of the dealer will

relieve you of this last danger in your path. Thenceforward you

have the whole evening--the whole night, if needful--to ransack

the treasures of the house and to make good your safety. This is

help that comes to you with the mask of danger. Up!" he cried:

"up, friend; your life hangs trembling in the scales: up, and

act!"

Markheim steadily regarded his counsellor. "If I be condemned to

evil acts," he said, "there is still one door of freedom open--I

can cease from action. If my life be an ill thing, I can lay it

down. Though I be, as you say truly, at the beck of every small

temptation, I can yet, by one decisive gesture, place myself

beyond the reach of all. My love of good is damned to barrenness;

it may, and let it be! But I have still my hatred of evil; and

from that, to your galling disappointment, you shall see that I

can draw both energy and courage."

The features of the visitor began to undergo a wonderful and

lovely change: they brightened and softened with a tender triumph;

and, even as they brightened, faded and dislimned. But Markheim

did not pause to watch or understand the transformation. He opened

the door and went downstairs very slowly, thinking to himself. His

past went soberly before him; he beheld it as it was, ugly and

strenuous like a dream, random as chance-medley--a scene of

defeat. Life, as he thus reviewed it, tempted him no longer; but

on the further side he perceived a quiet haven for his bark. He

paused in the passage, and looked into the shop, where the candle

still burned by the dead body. It was strangely silent. Thoughts

of the dealer swarmed into his mind, as he stood gazing. And then

the bell once more broke out into impatient clamor.

He confronted the maid upon the threshold with something like a

smile.

"You had better go for the police," said he: "I have killed your

master."